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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689510">Scarred Bark, Broken Heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_angels_club/pseuds/wayward_angels_club'>wayward_angels_club</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Things We Fix Along The Way [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(no but like kinda actually), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Beginning of S13 Dean Vibes written by someone who's never seen S13, Canon is kind of pushed aside for this but like only a little bit, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Dean is learning not to ignore his trauma as much, Despair Coda, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mild(ish) Angst, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Tree!Cas, and we are all very proud of him, but no one is around to hear them, our boy ~really~ wants his angel back, post 15x18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:15:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_angels_club/pseuds/wayward_angels_club</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't know what made him decide on the tree. They didn’t have a body to burn, not this time. They didn’t have a six-foot hole to dig and he felt odd putting a marker over unmarred earth. So when he stumbled upon a tree in the woods surrounding the bunker, one with a beehive tucked nine feet up he didn’t even realize he had popped out his pocket knife and started carving until the first three letters were written in the wet bark.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Things We Fix Along The Way [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2041545</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Scarred Bark, Broken Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I know the timing of the final episodes doesn't make this Coda possible but I felt like I needed to write it still.</p><p>Essentially, in this little divergence, Chuck doesn't puff the entire world away in a second but instead works up to killing everyone slowly, starting with the closest people to TFW 2.0 meaning that there is more time between the events of 15x18 and the events of 15x19.</p><p>There is a brief mention of Dean thinking about killing himself using his gun during his speech, it's not necessarily new for Dean but I still wanted to mention it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean doesn't know what made him decide on the tree. They didn’t have a body to burn, not this time. They didn’t have a six-foot hole to dig and he felt odd putting a marker over unmarred earth. So when he stumbled upon a tree in the woods surrounding the bunker, one with a beehive tucked nine feet up he didn’t even realize he had popped out his pocket knife and started carving until the first three letters were written in the wet bark.</p><p>His throat burned as he worked. The same knife sliced skin wide so that protection could be painted onto a door that was never going to hold. Cas was always ready to bleed for him, always ready to do whatever he needed to keep him safe.</p><p>Tears threatened to ruin his work by blocking his field of view but each time he tilted his head to the sky and tried to breathe through it.</p><p>The squared-off letters seem to mock him once he finishes, if Cas’d been here the letters would have been beautiful, a burst of power and it could have been script etched into the wood. Instead, it's his blocky ugly writing.</p><p>Something hideous rears its head in his chest, and staring at the letters, staring at the name. He always deserved more than Dean could give him, than this world could give him. He deserves more than a scar in some bark in a forest hardly anyone treks into. He deserves more than to die without knowing—to die thinking he wasn’t loved.</p><p>Dean doesn't look to the sky as his eyes fill again. Sam always said he needed to let himself feel. That ignoring your trauma isn't the same as dealing with it. But he worries that if he gives into it fully he’ll never resurface. Drowned in his own mind with the pain and regret, the fear and the sadness that washes in like the tide when his guard drops.</p><p>So he doesn’t let himself sink, he treads as best he can, hearing Bobby’s gruff voice in his head just like when he was a kid, ‘keep your ears above water son, that’s the only way to make sure you stay alive out there’, it’s like Bobby knew exactly why he needed that information. Like he knew it wasn't about swimming.</p><p>He’s not sure how long he spends looking at the carving, or when the wind picks up and shakes shivers through his body. He’s not sure when the tears dry and the wracking sobs take over.</p><p>Cas looked at peace when it came for him, and it ruins him to know that. To know that loving him brought him to the one moment of true happiness. Loving a worthless, broken, fucked up killer—<em>no</em>. No, Cas said he wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a monster or a tool to be used and thrown aside, and yet he killed another hadn’t he? Killed him by doing nothing at all because that's what happens, that’s his legacy, people get close to him and they get killed. They always get killed.</p><p>Dean’s not sure when he heads inside again, or how he finds himself at the tree almost every day since.</p><p>For the longest time he can do nothing but look, words that fight to break free, stay trapped behind the years of burying what he always felt, stay tapped behind the last dam he has standing in his soul the soul Cas saved—a good lot that did. He knows the dam won’t hold forever and all he can do is imagine the damage when it does finally break.</p><p>He doesn't always go alone either. Sam takes trips to the tree by himself sometimes but mostly he goes when Dean does. Jack trails after him every once in a while too but they usually let him go alone.</p><p>Snow begins to fall as he stands at the tree, the beehive long since gone dormant, its occupants still burrowing in for their months-long sleep. And God how Dean envies their ability to escape reality for longer than it takes to sleep off a hangover.</p><p>It’s late for the snow, weeks too late but the world has been colder since—well since.</p><p>It’s been a while since he last talked while he visited, the dam broke finally or rather the levels grew too high on one side and it began to leak. Still, back then he hadn’t said much of anything.</p><p>He tries to talk now, he tries to do the same as what he did at his father's grave all those years ago trapped in a djinn dream, trapped in a world that seemed so perfect until he peeled back its layers. Kinda just like the one he actually lived in.</p><p>“Ca-s,” his voice breaks before he manages to speak the single syllable. No one is around to notice though, no matter how much he wishes he was speaking to a person instead of an unfeeling unrelenting piece of wood. Still though, it's easier to talk when no one is there to hear it, he doesn't have to hold as much back.</p><p>“Cas, I-,” Dean lets out a rough hum as he collects himself. This speech is going to be different. He can feel it, the emotions within him seem to grow choppy, spilling over the dam wall more and more and he just knows that whatever happens, he won’t be returning to the bunker whole.</p><p>“I keep thinking, y’know, back to that night you walked into that barn in Illinois, you told me that good things do happen, and I mean it’s not like I expected you to, but you didn’t believe me when I told you that nothing good happens to me. I don’t know if in the time from then to no—I don’t know if you ever figured out that I was right or not but I think that the one good thing that happened to me was the worst thing to happen to me too.” Dean stares at his name, willing it to actually be him. The cold bites at his fingers and his nose. His toes grow cold in his boots but he doesn’t move to leave; he barely even feels it anyways.</p><p>“When Chuck told us that you were the one who never listened,” he chokes out a broken laugh, “it honestly made perfect sense, you did always say that it was our story, that we were the thing that was real in a world of manufactured realities. And when he said it I swear it was like I was standing in that ratty kitchen, minutes before Lucifer rose, minutes before you di—died for the first time, listening to you say that we were making it up. And I thought as Chuck went on and on how maybe I haven't been dreaming it up all these years, maybe it wasn't Chuck’s doing, and I was going to try to talk to you about it, after a shit ton of booze mind you.” He’s quiet for a long time, the snow begins to blanket the space around him and he thinks about how he’ll never get to brush snow off of the lapel of Cas’ stupid trench coat.</p><p>Just the thought starts a domino effect, his mind rushing through everything he wanted and everything he’ll never get now and it’s so overwhelming it sends him to his knees. Of course, because he clearly will never be able to catch a break, all it does is remind him of the last time they were in purgatory together, the fear and heartbreak that shook him to his core, the devastation of Cas brushing off what he wanted to say because fuck it was so much more than his prayer.</p><p>“You beat me to it though, and then—well we both know what happened next.” His fingers are ice when they wipe the tears from his eyes. They jolt him, a shock to his system.</p><p>“You never gave me a chance to respond, didn’t even give me a damn moment to process any of it. And you’re a selfish son of a bitch for that because that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t—I <em>needed </em>you to stay, I needed you to hear it too. I won’t ever be able to stay mad at you because I never have been, not for any of the shit you pulled in the past. But that? That was a new low.” He sniffles from the cold or from his tears he doesn't know, but he does it all the same.</p><p>“Y’know if you were here right now you’d tell me to go inside because humans catch colds so easily and you don’t know how fucking much I need to hear that now Cas.” His heart plummets in his chest again. He feels sick all over again so he clenches his jaw to keep from heading too far down that road.</p><p>"I remember thinking about you after I made you leave the bunker. After my stupid fucking choices caught up with me. Every time I did I would feel sick all over again, just like I felt when I watched your face crumble, because the weather was getting colder and colder and you were alone out there. Without a home, without a family, and it was all my fault. I'll never understand why you seemed to forgive me for that. I'll never forgive myself for it." tears burn in the back of his throat. The strain of holding it all back shreds at the muscle and it screams with every breath he manages to shake into his lungs.</p><p>“I remember everything Cas, all of it, every fight, every drink, every goddamn time we looked at each other. And yet I can’t recall a fucking thing because I thought I had more time. After everything we’d gone through, I still thought we would have more time. It's all broken and jumbled and set to static and I can’t handle it because it's crystal clear and as muddy as anything because I thought I’d be able to make more, replace what got muddled. I thought you had more time.”</p><p>He shuffles around and presses his back against the trunk of the tree. His ass is uncomfortable as hell what with the roots and the wet cold earth below him but his knees appreciate the switch.</p><p>“I’m having a hard time this time because a part of me thinks just like it did after the whole leviathan fiasco. I swear you’re going to come back, that this is all a mix-up, that if I wait just a little longer, hold on a little longer, put my gun down just one more night that you’ll be back. But it’s been weeks Cas and nothing’s changed. I wake up and I go to sleep in a world that doesn’t have you in it and I was always okay before because you were just there even if I didn’t have you like I wanted I still got to see you, watch you, lo—be with you. But now it’s all empty, and no matter how ironically appropriate that is given the dumbass move you made a year and a half ago, I’m hanging on by a thread man. And Sam doesn't know how to help, even with all his dead girlfriends as experience to draw from.” He’s quiet for a long time, chewing on his lip, flexing his fingers together as he just sits.</p><p>“He says I need to stop making jokes to cover it all up but that's all I know how to do. I mean you can’t mourn your mom if you have a baby brother to take care of so you joke. You can’t talk about what the internet says is PTSD because there are monsters to hunt and people to save so you joke. You can’t let yourself be vulnerable because that means death so you joke. You can't tell your best friend what you need to so you joke. You hide behind something safe because no one wants you to show what's really there.” Dean's mind is a mess right now, jumping from one point to another, skipping ahead and falling behind. He has so much he wants to say and it’s like he’s trying to say it all at once.</p><p>He can <em>almost </em>hear Cas’ voice admonishing him for thinking that he didn't have a support system, that he didn't have people who loved him and wanted him to be okay and it strips him raw. Because it’s only been a few weeks, how could he already be forgetting his voice, or which way he tilted his head when he didn’t understand some random human action, which foot he started with when he stood up from a chair, if he liked smooth or crunchy peanut butter better even if it was all molecules to him, what his arms felt like wrapped around him, how he sighed when Dean was being an idiot, what his smiles looked like as he sat at their kitchen table talking with Jack.</p><p>How was he already forgetting all of the little things that made him fall for the fallen angel, heaven's most loved, heaven's most corrupted.</p><p>His chest is cracked so wide every part of him falls inside, his very soul falls into the pit, tumbles down and down and down because there are a million things that he and Cas will never get to do but there are a billion things Cas will never do again.</p><p>Sure Cas’ll never learn to dance but he’ll never smile again. He’ll never have the chance to memorize the words to the songs Dean showed him but he’ll never feel the sun on his skin again. Or laugh or cry or sleep in late. He’s never going to make another milk run, be it a monster hunt or an actual milk run. He’ll never watch another bee documentary or hug his son again.</p><p>Cas lived hundreds of millions of years and yet there was so much he left unfinished, he’s been around for eons and yet he still died too soon.</p><p>It takes him a moment to remember that even if Cas had been around since the Cambrian explosion in reality he’d only experienced humanity for eleven years. And all of it was spent fighting, shouldn't he get a fucking chance to just <em>live </em>for a fucking second. Let himself relax, shake the weight off his shoulders, just <em>be </em>finally?</p><p>Dean turns and looks from his position at Cas' name, the angle is atrocious so he can barely see the etchings.</p><p>There are a billion things he’ll never do again, a million things he’ll never get to experience. And for someone who's given all that Cas has given to this world, that just won’t do.</p><p>“You told me love drove me, you said that I fought for everything because of love, that I taught you how to and fuck Cas I don’t know how that's possible. But I’ve fought for nearly forty years because of love and there's no way in hell I am stopping that now. I’m going to fight for you, I’ll fight Chuck for you, I’ll fight against the anger that still lives inside me and dammit I’ll fight to get you back because no fucking way am I losing you forever after that speech. If love drives me Cas then you, you…” Dean takes a deep breath. “Happiness is in just saying it, but I can’t tell a piece of wood, so I’ll wait until you are back, because I <em>will </em>get you back. I don’t care what it takes. You need to hear it, you deserve to hear it. You deserve to know.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I thought I was going to leave it on the hopeful ending but the little hamster wheel started spinning in my head and I'm planning on rewriting the ending of spn sticking as close to canon plot points/events as I can while still changing the ending to reflect the story that's been told especially in these last few seasons.</p><p>It'll be posted as a new work, making this a two-part (or more it all depends on what happens while I write it) series. And it'll actually deal with the holes left in the plot :) :) (no I'm not bitter about the ending at all I promise).</p><p>If you'd like there's a <a href="https://cas-s-sinoatrial-node.tumblr.com/post/635615699851755520/scarred-bark-broken-heart-15x18-codaalternate">rebloggable tumblr post</a> on my blog, and if the feeling strikes you feel free to follow me.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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